Communicating ideas in 2D

The first Artist I've discovered is J. D. Hillberry, who majors in fine pencil work and charcoal. The drawing that caught my eye was "Young Royalty"

The techniques I really enjoyed and stuck out for me while viewing this piece was the toning very accurate pencil marks he has produced. Doing this he produces great detail and brings the animal in the drawing alive, showing that its full of life and such care to detail can't be easy.

I tried doing a drawing of an animal myself and as I originally thought it was a lot more difficult to make it look life-like than most people think. The way he tones in ever bit of hair on his drawing is remarkable and really adds to the entirety of the drawing in a whole. From learning this hopefully in the future when doing fine pencil drawings like portraits or still life I can introduce tone and refined markings of this caliber to get the desired effect.










The second Artist I found is an illustrator called Ben Voldman. A lot of his work was very interesting and it was the idea and technique of his work that interested me the most and not the actual pieces.

The way the 3D text has been centered and everything around it is in harmony, not to crowded, not too empty. It's really cartoony and I think how he has chosen the font, colors of the words and composition has really made the image stand out to make people really take in what the image is saying. In the one above its promoting Halloween. This is a technique he uses throughout his work and it does make it unique in several ways.

I tried making some 3D text and editing it in photoshop just as a test to see how it would look. I wasn't trying to promote anything like Ben Voldman. I was just merely trying some of his technique (the centered 3D text) in with a background to try and produce a common theme. It was a lot less cartoony but I think the effect works well and I hope to experiment with various other techniques like his.












The third Artist I discovered is a cartoonist called Paul Baker. He had a lot of good work but it was his animal based work I loved, especially the one pictured below.

The way he emphasizes certain parts to of the animals body to show its true nature is brilliant. Like on the piranha, the giant teeth with an eyeball hanging out to represent its ferocious and carnivorous tendencies. He also makes everything so defined, like the outline of the animal and all its features for it to really stick out and grab your attention. Obviously This is a process that every cartoonist does but I thought this particular artist did it in a definitive and skilled way compared to others.

I tried doing my own cartoon animal as an experiment and it didn't go too badly. I tried emphasizing certain facial features like in Paul Bakers work and even though it would of been better produced I think the technique still gives it a good look








The fourth and final artist I looked at is Man Ray. He was a very famous and successful surreal Artist and was his more abstract work that intrigued me, especially his piece "Promenade".

It's the shear abstract that I admired. He has used very basic shapes to produce a piece that speaks so much. Its his technique of using various shapes and color in an abstract manner to portray something, while giving it a rough but controlled texture that gives it such a good look in my opinion. After seeing this it immediately made me want to try my hand at abstract surrealism. But I assume its very hard to create something like this and keep it so controlled. He has purpose in everything he does in this piece which is the key to producing work of this level.

I tried my hand at some surreal abstract painting and I think it turned out a lot more chaotic than originally intended. I should of used more simple block colors like in his painting rather than hundreds of different ones like in mine. Although like in his I tried to keep the shaped simple and easy to recognize I think I got carried away and created a bit of a mess, I tried to stay away from straight lines and try going out the box but in the future I will know from these mistakes to stop making errors like those again.

Alice Scott - Paper Portfolio

The artist was kind enough to show us her portfolio and how she managed to create it. She used this portfolio to apply for Fine art, Sculpture and Environmental art at a university. It took her 3 days to get choose which pieces of art would be going into the portfolio and an afternoon to compose them and all the work has been chosen from the past 2 years.

 

 The portfolio itself is very well presented in the ways that its all laid out on A1 card with all the artwork accurately measured to be situated in the center, with an obvious attention to detail, cleanliness and neatness.

Even though some of her work looks cluttered at first; examining it thoroughly shows that everything has been composed to reflect on each other and keep the viewer intrigued, e.g starting off with a strong piece of work, varying the intensity of emotion that emits from each piece to create diversity; finally ending with another strong piece. In this sense even though the artworks separate; one can almost interpret the entire portfolio to be a singular piece of artwork.

I noticed seeing the artwork in real life was a lot more interesting and informative. The way the piece was constructed and carefully done. The thickness of lines in the pencil drawing, texture, faint markings and tone were all incredibly more clear to see.

 

Since the portfolio has been laid out by hand it shows the viewer that the artist has personally taken the time to pick out and carefully present her artwork to show her capabilities. It contains mostly edited photographs; most of which involve the artist herself which add an extra sense of expressiveness, which looks brilliant in a portfolio looking to apply for a degree course in a university.

Landscape editing

This is the original image I took with my phone during hiking in Glencoe, up Scotland.

At first when editing this I wanted to try and use an effect that I picked up off of reading about Ansel Adams, a famous photographer. He used contrast on black and white to bring out the boldness and feeling in a photograph which gave me the inspiration to try it on mine. This was the outcome -

I turned the photo black and white then played with the contrast till I had the desired effect. I liked the outcome but felt it would do a lot better with color and after some playing around with it I came to the final photograph which is this -

I felt this was the best out of the lot because the color I added mixed with the contrast from before gave it it's own unique effect and very calm look.

Photo Editing

This is another portrait that somebody took of me that I've edited myself. This is the original.

The edited version has changed drastically. To start off the process I smudged the entire background to create a simple but eerie effect while adding in gradient maps with a variety of the color blue, to intensify the given effect. Then I applied a similar effect to change the colors of my face to go with the background while also darkening my eyes to make it all the more creepy. This was also all done on photoshop.

Derek Boshier - Digital Portfolio

When you open this up at first glance it's first impression it gives you is a rough sketchy feel, when in fact it is very well composed. The the impression of control is present while maintaining a simplistic feeling. There is a wide variety of different kinds of works available to look at, but his most prominent pieces were his paintings, which allowed his popularity rise as an artist all while being a student. I found this out from the biography listed on the main page.

The purpose of this portfolio from what I've gathered  is to show how his artistic side of life stemmed with drawings and paintings but progressed onto finding other ways in which to express his love of art like graphics, photography and film. Although he did these great things he would always come back to painting as from the portfolio shows was his passion.

The advantage of having all this work online means you can view everything he has ever done with annotation and dates to which they were created. It gives the viewer and great insight of how he worked. The down side is not seeing them in person means you can't properly view the size of the piece, or the detail of brushstrokes and close up detail in general. This can possibly give the viewer a substantially worse experience.

Portrait Editing

This is the original portrait.

From a portrait somebody took of me I had the idea of taking it into Photoshop to try and edit it in some other ways than just changing the contrast and color. I started off mirroring the image on itself to make it look like they were listening in on each other. Then used the liquify tool with the figure on the right to try and contort it and make it look creature-like. Also to mix it up I changed the background to stop it looking as identical.

Erika Farkas' Digital Portfolio

The first thing I noticed about the digital portfolio is that when I first opened it I realized straight away it was designed for ease of navigation in the way its composed. The intentions are very clear and unlike a paper-based portfolio it has links and shortcuts to quickly transport you to your desired location, whether it be the biography, her work, Exhibits or many of the listed social networking sites she is registered on. Of course you could not down your social networks down in a paper-based portfolio but it wouldn't be as convenient.

 

Another advantage the digital has over the paper-based is that all of her works are composed very neatly and set into categories like Portrait and Figure Drawings, Colored Works and Digital Abstracts. While the paper-based can obviously do this too, it doesn't have the function of switching between the two so efficiently.

 

You can tell she has a greater passion for pencil/charcoal drawings  more than her digital or painting work as their is a lot more drawings compared to the others. The way the categories are listed show the drawings listed first as her priority.  She also mentions in the biography that she takes a greater interest in pencil/charcoal drawings. I think the main purpose of the portfolio is to make the user feel comfortable while viewing her work and to show that she enjoys some of her work more than others.